UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : UNMAS - Press Conference: Update on Mine Action

All right,

Here we are.

Hi, everybody.

Welcome to the, um,

press conference of the United Nations Mine Action Service and the

Geneva International Centre, uh, for humanitarian de

mining, which is taking place in the context of the national directors meeting

of, uh, more than or 30 at least 30 national directors who have come here to

Geneva for the 27th International National Directors Meeting and UN Advisors,

which has been taking place since Monday morning

over at the CIJ or the International Conference Centre here in Geneva.

We briefed on Friday the 26th, um, to give a heads up About what, This,

uh, NDM, as we call it for short. The national directors meeting

was going to be about, and we had a large number of questions

and we were asked if we could please come back.

Um, this week,

in order to try to have more time to be able to explain more about

what's going on around the world with

whether unexploded ordinance or explosive remnants of war

and landmines. So we've done that today.

So this press conference was here as the the best we could do to bring over some

people and have some more time since we were fairly pressed on Friday about the time.

So I thank all of you who have shown up,

um, and I hope that more people will come.

Um, because again, there seemed to have been a lot of questions on Friday.

So today we're gonna hear from a number of people.

Um, we have up here on the podium with me. We have Francesca

Chioda,

who's the chief of the Mine Action programme in

Ethiopia. She works for

a mass.

I mean,

she'll be your first speaker and she will tell you what's going on in Ethiopia.

It was a question on Friday, and we wanted to clarify that more.

Just next to her is Fatima

Zori,

who's the chief of our unmasked programme in Libya.

She's part of the the special political mission uns

mill.

Um and she's gonna talk about Libya,

and then just next to her

is Charles

Mungo Birch,

who's the head of our mine action

programme in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Um who also was in has been in Gaza up until the end of last year,

when he came out and was replaced,

Um, in order to be able to follow up his duties and get ready for

Well, we'll see the what? What needs to be done next

in the room with us.

Just so you're aware because I brought them here,

even though they can't sit on this podium with us?

Uh,

we have Fran O'Grady who's sitting over on this side,

and he's available to answer questions.

I'll be happily relinquishing my seat that he could come here and tell you things.

He's been in South Sudan for over five years in the last bit of time,

and he's now running the standing capacity.

The United Nations Mine Action Service is standing capacity,

which is based in Brindisi

and has basically, uh, a

mandate to be able to move anywhere in the world quickly, I would say

eight hours, but he might hit me.

Um, but the purpose behind it is that they go. They go quickly.

It's like the rapid reaction forces that we used to have.

So again,

we've been called the places by either the Secretary General or by a member state.

Um and we wanna go quickly so he can talk a little about that.

We also have over on this side, we have Mr Paul Heslop, which I think many of you know,

if you've covered these press conferences.

He was with us last year at this press conference.

He's presently the head of mine action for U NDP in Ukraine.

and he's worked in over 25 countries and he's here also

as a resource person and could also come and answer questions.

And finally we have Rory Logan,

who is from the Geneva Centre who has also worked in over 10 countries.

He has some knowledge because we were asked about it on Friday about Sri Lanka.

So follow up questions about Sri Lanka. You're welcome to bring,

um and also is very much on top of the situation in Ukraine. So I can say we have two,

very well informed

speakers for Ukraine at this moment,

and we also have the other people I've mentioned.

So with that said, let me be quiet and let me pass over the floor to Francesca Cida,

who's going to talk about Ethiopia over to you.

Thank you, Lee

and good morning, everybody.

As introduced by Lee, my name is Francesca and I'm the chief of the UN

MAS programme in Ethiopia.

Mas

has been in Ethiopia

in a permanent capacity since a couple of years.

However, it's only since last year that we have a more

more presence in the northern region of the country.

I'm glad that Ethiopia was brought up as a country of interest as

it's often one of those mine action contexts that get to be forgotten

and after other.

However, just to point out a few facts about the country,

the current situation from a mine action point of view is quite complex as we have

legacy contamination of minefield along the main international border.

However, the conflict in the

tiger region now has spilled over to other bordering region has left behind

a new layer of contamination that's affecting communities.

On the other hand,

the mine action sector in the country

is extremely limited and with very few resources

as I speak now,

there is no international mine action organisation or operator that

is fully accredited to conduct survey and clearance activity.

The Ethiopian National Defence Forces have some

mine action capacity and the mining expertise.

However,

this is significantly limited given both the size

of the country and also what the contamination

looks like

accreditation for six International

is currently in progress,

and we are very hopeful that at least four of them will

be fully accredited for mine action activities in the next month.

Also, just to give you a bit of

an idea of what contamination looks like and what we are,

what we are dealing with in terms of needs

only in 2023 we were able to record

1500 victims of explosive ordinance, mostly in the Tigre

and Afar regions. Around 87% of these victims are male, so it's mostly

most male and younger.

Um, younger boys in particular.

Um, just to also to give you a bit of a of a few more examples.

Um, only in between March and April

we had four cases of explosive incident affecting Children below 18,

and this is mostly cases of either scrap metal collection or playing with items in

avertly. So those are those are the

the type of needs that we see on a daily basis in Ethiopia.

Altogether,

the mine action sector in the country needs

$10 million to scale up activities and then

try to reach communities in needs.

Up until now, only 2% of the 10 millions have been have been covered.

So large, large needs

and also large part of the of the activities from the mine action sector remains

unmet and not being able to be carried out by the operators.

I'll

stop here just with my overview and happy to answer questions.

Thank you so much. And

thank you so much. And we'll come back with questions and I will go over to Fatma.

Fatma,

please.

Thank you so much, Lee. Good morning, everybody.

I would start like I mean, I would mention that last last year I took up this position

and when I walked into Libya based in Tripoli,

working in my capacity as chief of en Mass May

Action

programme,

uh, I went to the to the country with the With the san,

which were two san, which were captured by my in my mind. But

that my my mind captured

the first one was when I grew up in, uh, in Libya. Um,

I was born in Tripoli and I grew up in,

and I have I kept really good memories from my childhood

and then the second time when I went to Benghazi again

and in Tripoli in another capacity with the government to meet the

partners there and maybe the counterpart.

And I was shocked when I saw that heavy ammunition

and weapons.

It was quite shocking for me. I left with that also bad memory

memories. Um then I took up, of course, other positions. And then

Then I got the job,

uh, with, uh, in this capacity, when I I had the team in front of me.

I wanted to to see how they assess the situation.

And I looked at the existence of this ammunition. I understood that

this area ammunition storage areas, which are open

17 of them

uh, I might say also with,

um

8, 80

80 15, 8, 815 50 bankers,

uh, open

in total.

It has 1000 tonnes of ammunition

from different types. I mean,

anything, you can find it there

and it's it's open so everybody can have access.

And from time to time we hear explosions. And I witnessed myself

one of the explosions, and that was really bad. We were like all of us concerned

about these kind of explosions in populated areas

and then we decided to take to reactivate and re

emphasise on the fact that this is very dangerous.

It's quite a

it's quite concerning and alarming situation in there.

Also, any kind of devices you can find them also across Libya

in the populated areas. Recently, we have also witnessed them this month.

End of this month,

Um, an explosion of hand grenade.

Uh, nine

Children were playing in the neighbourhood.

Sometimes they play with their ball and then they go back and

they threw the hand grenade again and again until with the stones,

whatever.

Until, uh, an explosion occurred.

And then they were all injured,

including a girl who was playing also in front of the door.

So for me, this is quite alarming and it should be really

focused. We should have really more focus on this

kind of situations.

We are doing a lot. The partners are not,

are not really

deployed everywhere and they were really too keen

to do. They are really keen to do whatever they can do.

We face the challenges like

all the other humanitarians

so actors, but still we feel like

there is a lot to be done in Libya. Thank you.

Thank you very much,

Fatma.

And we'll come back to you with questions.

And now we'll go over to Charles Mungo Birch. He goes by Mungo.

Just so you know, Mungo, take the floor.

Thank you very much, Lee.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Mungo Birch and I'm the chief mine action programme Palestine

on Gaza. Hamas has been working in Gaza for over a decade.

Prior to October 7th,

our primary role was to clear deep

buried aircraft bombs and conduct risk education.

After October 7th, the programme has undergone a rapid evolution.

We managed to get our first

officers into Gaza within a month of the conflict starting

and subsequently we've become an enabler of the humanitarian response in Gaza.

We support humanitarian convoys going north

and do explosive hazard assessments

of humanitarian sites

which allow humanitarian work to continue

to illustrate this. In December last year,

who

did a convoy from southern Gaza to Gaza City's Al

Shifa Hospital?

This convoy was led and accompanied by Hamas

officers who enabled the convoy to travel this dangerous route.

That convoy evacuated over 30 premature babies

which

we returned to southern Gaza and only one of whom died.

That's what a mass role in the whole sector of mine action is enabling

in Gaza. Currently,

the situation in Gaza is unprecedented for the Gaza context.

Gaza has more rubble than Ukraine and to put that in perspective,

the Ukrainian front line is 600 miles long

and Gaza is 25 miles long.

There is 37 million tonnes of rubble at the latest estimate in Gaza.

This rubble is likely heavily contaminated with the,

but clearance of this will be further

complicated by other

hazards in the rubble.

There is estimated to be over 800,000 tonnes of asbestos, for instance,

alone in the Gaza rubble.

We also focus on explosive ordinance risk education,

which will become increasingly important

as Palestinians relocate from southern Gaza to the north.

When the war started,

we immediately initiated our mass media

emergency mass media risk education campaign

through social media and radio.

This reached over a million people then, as connectivity issues and issues with

access to power, sources for charging phones, et cetera became more problematic.

We're shifting our emphasis to face to face risk education

and the distribution of hard copy risk education materials.

All in all, a mass plans to scale up its operations,

but has successfully responded in this emergency stage,

we hope ultimately to be able to be the

co ordination body for mine action in Gaza

and to stand up our own explosive ordinance disposal teams.

In terms of funding, we've secured $5 million of funding.

We need to continue our work for the next 12 months. A further $40

million.

The sector as a whole will need hundreds of millions of US dollars

over multiple years in order to make Gaza safe again for the population.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mungo.

Um, so at this point, I have a few questions have already come in through, uh,

through zoom.

Um, so we'll go ahead and start there, and this is the first questions in the room,

so I'll start. I Sorry. Take it away.

Hi. Uh, Chris,

Jan

Frans.

Uh, I had a question for, uh, Mr BM,

in terms of, uh, unexploded ordnance in Gaza. What do you have to What are you facing?

and also I was wondering you were talking already Friday about the 37 million tonnes

of rubble mixed now with asbestos

I. I know that you had a meeting in Jordan

two weeks ago to discuss what you're going to do with all that. Where?

How

what's the plan to

if the war stops? What's the plan to evacuate the rubble?

How can you give us some practical details on how this is going to

happen? Where does it go? Thank you.

Two weeks ago, we were involved in a meeting in

Jordan hosted by U NDP, who is the lead UN agency on rebel removal in Gaza.

That meeting brought together all the major actors who

would be involved in rubble removal in Gaza.

The

issue is because the level of rubble is so unprecedented

it's going to take new thinking on how we proceed with the clearance.

So currently we're still in the planning stage. En

mas is looking potentially at training banks, people, et

cetera. We're looking at specialised risk education materials

and then,

ultimately the clearance operations are going

to need significant amounts of heavy plants

and trucks, et cetera. To conduct

the methodology of how we're going to do that is

still something that's being discussed because of the sheer scale.

So the rubble problem dwarfs that faced by mine action actors in

Mosul. So it's a significant challenge.

Until we've been able to get access to the North and can conduct an assessment.

We're not certain about the level of contamination. However, anecdotal

anecdotal stories suggest that it's exceptionally heavy in northern Gaza.

Our

teams have encountered

UXO unexploded ordinance on their missions to the north, and

we believe it will be a

huge issue going forward.

Just a quick follow up, if I may.

Could could you give us a sense of how many people you have there? Um

um you you said you were working with convoys of humanitarian convoys.

Um, and how hard is it to get access?

And do the Israelis let you in easily, or is it difficult? Thank you.

Sorry.

We currently have six international staff in Gaza,

five of whom are EOD officers.

We also have six national staff,

the scale scaling up process.

So before the war, we had three international staff based in Gaza.

During the first month of the war, I was the only person there.

So we've scaled up significantly.

We're also in the process of seconding

in kind EOD officers, from

notably Mines Advisory Group and

Humanity and Inclusion.

In addition, Norwegian people's aid has shown interest in this process as well,

so we hope to scale up further.

But this number is enough to cover the amount of convoys currently.

But we need to scale up to do

more explosives hazard assessments of humanitarian sites,

which will be key in enabling the humanitarian response Once there's a ceasefire.

In terms of the difficulty to travel,

we travel primarily on inter agency convoys, providing

EOD support to them.

And really, that really depends on a day to day situation.

If convoys are allowed to go or not,

it's dependent on what the conditions are in Gaza.

Follow up.

Good.

All right. Other questions here.

No.

Very good.

I'm gonna go ahead and ask that we have two hands up, so I will move over there. So

Yordi

a

and, um,

you're on.

Thank you, Lee. And thank you for this briefing.

I have a question on Ukraine.

Do you have any information on the level of

contamination on the territories controlled by the Russian army

and the risk of this for the populations there?

We know for example that Ukraine is

massively using cluster munition delivered by the

US as well as antipersonnel mines against

populated areas in particular in Donetsk.

Do you have access to these territories? And if not, have you requested it?

To whom and what has been answered to you

in case that you have asked it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. We've just had, uh, Paul Heslop

join us up here. And Rory, would you like to come sit here?

And, uh, we'll have Rory come up, so we'll do a little Ukraine session right now,

and, uh, I will hereby ask, uh, Paul to take over as MC while I'm away.

OK, thanks, lady.

So

now in, in terms of contamination in Ukraine,

there is obviously extensive contamination, uh, on both sides of the front line.

You're specifically asking about contamination in the areas that are currently

under the control of of the Russian Federation.

At this stage, there has been no

assessment undertaken by any sort of independent authorities. Either the U

civil society or international

NGOs

across cross line

access is very, very limited.

And I think most of it is related to prisoner transfers and

the exchange of human remains.

So at this stage, we've not had anybody work on that side of the conflict zone.

I would agree with your assessment. There has been extensive use of

all types of munitions by both sides in

this conflict, and we're seeing a level of contamination

that we've not seen in Europe since the Second World War.

We know that munitions used have between a

10 and 30 per cent fail rate.

So when you start looking at

in excess of 10,000 munitions a day being fired,

you're looking at somewhere between one and 2000 unexploded bombs

as a result. So, yes, there is extremely

high levels of contamination on both sides of the front line

in

terms of the areas that we can access in Ukraine itself,

extensive non technical surveys now being undertaken,

and areas are being assessed as quickly as

possible to whether they actually contain contamination or whether

they can be released to be farmed and used productively.

But

Rory J now didnt into that

no, I mean, I concur with concur with your assessment,

I would say that Ukraine is in the areas that it has got control over.

It's actually making pretty steady and very rapid progress

in conducting the survey and trying to

understand the true extent of the contamination,

which which is an exercise which will have obviously need to be

undertaken as soon as the other areas are accessible as well.

But but it's it's that it's that detailed information that we need to

develop a proper plan and a proper capacity to solve the issue.

Thank you.

Thanks. And if I could just add to that I mean, the reason I'm at

the briefing today is

Ukraine actually has two mine problems at the moment.

In terms of contaminated or suspected contaminated land,

there is the land that is suspected that is contaminated, and that land is very,

very heavily contaminated.

But there is also a lot of land that is suspected that is actually not contaminated.

And

when you look at the global impact of the

conflict in Ukraine and the global impact of the

perceived presence of unexploded ordnance and mines or legacy mines,

it affects global food prices.

It affects global food security, it affects global energy prices.

So if we're in a position that in Ukraine we could help bring

the price of fuel down by one cent a litre, or the price of bread by 10 cents a loaf.

And you think of how many

millions or billions of litres of fuel are used every day and how many

billions of loaves of bread are sold.

We will be talking about a really significant impact to

the world economy and world food security if we can get

the land that is suspected of being contaminated but is

not actually contaminated back into use as quickly as possible.

And then another aspect of this conflict,

I think we need to think about which again will

be on both sides is the number of young men

who are in their twenties and thirties now single, double or even

many quadruple amputations.

And how vast numbers of very serious,

injured veterans coming back into society as this as this war comes to a

close or hopefully comes to a close and how they're going to be reintegrated,

how we can reskill them, how we can ensure they've got the right prosthetics

to be able to come back.

And I think we're going to see legacy of this conflict with regard to the impact on

the social cohesion of both sides because of

a lack of investment in reintegration of people.

Been very seriously wounded in this conflict. So we need to look at that as well.

Sorry. Just one last follow. I completely

agree with everything, Paul said.

I also think it's important we've heard this week from the Ukrainians themselves

that actually significant

progress has been made on that survey. And last year alone,

they managed to

discount an area of 18,000 square kilometres.

So that's about half the size of Switzerland has been assessed and has been,

you know, put back into productive use in a very short time frame.

And I think we should congratulate them for that.

Thank you.

Uh,

we did have a couple of hands up. We have Lisa's hand up. Lisa.

Oh, so sorry. Uh, one second. Excuse me. Yes, go ahead.

yeah. I just take advantage of the fact that I'm in the briefing room. Thank you.

I had a question.

Ukraine is very often considered as a test bed for new

ammunition types and new ways of warfare and more modern ways.

More technology.

I was just wondering if this is something that you experience in terms of

new types of mines, new types of explosives, bombs.

Uh, how does it make your work more difficult or

more easy?

I know that there are some types of minds

that are supposed to auto destruct after a while.

If you could give us an idea on that and also maybe.

How does new technology help you to assess and to and to clear

mind

Arias? Thank you.

Thank you. I'll take the second question first.

So in terms of new technology, yes, there is a lot of new technology being

used in Ukraine, particularly the use of drones, robotics, underwater sensors,

different sensor technology.

So

things like infrared, ultraviolet

magnetometers, ground penetrating radar all sorts of different

sensors are being mounted onto different

robotics platforms.

The project that Rory just mentioned that involved a lot of land being

assessed

as not being contaminated even though it's

suspected involved satellite and aerial photography combined

again with a I and lots of things trying to analyse crater patterns.

So there's a lot of that type of use which is

very, very good in terms of helping show what land is not being contaminated

in terms of the land. That is again we're able to look at.

There's another project being done by the key school of economics,

where they're looking at artillery strike data and the cratering from that

and then trying to project how many of those bombs will have not

exploded by looking at the patterns that are formed from these barrages.

So,

yes, new technology is going to help.

New technology is going to make operations more effective.

But the scale of the problem needs to be confronted, is very, very

so you win with some sides and we lose on others

in terms of new weapons systems. Yes.

I mean, there are weapons systems being used by both sides

that have not been seen in other conflicts.

It is very difficult for internationals to go to the front line,

so I have not personally witnessed some of the

new mine types actually deployed in the field.

But I have seen pictures, and I have seen the results of

operations conducted by the Ukrainians that

bring back weapon systems that have been

used against Ukrainian forces because we don't have access to the other side.

We can only speculate on what is

what has been there, but

a

lot of the NATO munitions that were used.

I personally, even though been in this business 30 years,

have never seen an N law or storm shadow or some of those devices, for example.

So yes, we will be.

Now, when we get to a point where we can address those weapons systems,

we obviously will need to develop, render safe procedures RSPs

that will allow them to be safely disposed and dealt with.

That is just an ongoing process. And of course, we will be

in contact with the different governments have supplied these weapons systems

and looking for their assistance in

trying to make sure that the operators who are trying to deal with

those devices on the ground can do so as effectively as possible.

But that's no different to what we've seen in conflicts like Kosovo,

even going back to the lounge,

Annam or the use of a lot of aerial weapons. Gaza In 2009,

we were dealing with a lot of deep buried bombs being dropped,

and we were getting advice on how to deal with the fusing systems,

so there are processes in place to do this,

and a lot of it is just the basic skills

are applicable to any type of munition that you find.

Roy, would you like to add to that?

Yeah. Please come up here.

Rory is coming back.

Thanks.

I mean,

I'm playing a bit second fiddle here because Paul's answering the questions quite,

very comprehensively.

I mean, the only thing I would add on the the new technology side is that there is

in a country like Ukraine, there is a huge potential

to look at sort of big data to to to for them to perhaps

leverage artificial intelligence

to really think more carefully about data driven decision making as

they're prioritising and tasking where the

operations will eventually be deployed.

And that won't just be the data sets collected by mine action operators,

but a whole range of other sectors as well. The

data on agriculture,

critical infrastructure, education. There's a huge amount of

of of high quality information that's available in Ukraine

and that there is potential, I think,

to to draw it all together to help the government

as it as it embarks on the next 10 years,

which is which is the strategic framework. It's given itself

thanks

just quickly.

If I could just ask a follow up on that is,

Do you think that all this data collected the new technology used?

Is this something that

could be used elsewhere for de mining? And I don't know, maybe in Ethiopia or Libya.

Or

if you can exploit this data to see patterns or I don't know,

Do you think it could be helpful? Or is it just Ukraine

specific?

The data in Ukraine is Ukraine specific? The model. It's a prototype, a potential.

It's a possibility. But if it works,

I don't see any reason why it couldn't be applied to other contexts.

It will really depend on the information

that's available in those contexts to see how well

it will be able to work in other places.

I don't know if the colleagues have other views, but

that's what I think

I mean,

yeah, absolutely.

I mean, for me,

one of the exciting things about being in Ukraine is the seeing

the pace of innovation and the new ideas that are coming out,

and the layers of data that are there and and then being able to

potentially apply that those lessons into other countries.

You know, my previous job before Ukraine was Afghanistan.

And again there's a lot of agricultural land in

Afghanistan that's not being used because of very low density

mine

or suspected mine contamination.

And again if we can find sensors that can operate in very low density areas or,

you know, rapidly assess land using drones or satellite imagery.

But even,

you know, one of the things that we've been looking at in Ukraine was

it's very difficult in some of the areas because there's they've

basically depopulated for the survey teams to go and gather accurate,

accurate data.

And one thing we can do.

And this is totally Anoat.

But we can ask, for example, through the date of the Ministry of Digi

digital transformation.

Are cell phones active in those areas? So we don't know whose cell phones they are.

We don't know the numbers,

but just knowing there are cell phones active can tell us how many people are in that.

That area is the land

is

other people living in that village is or, for example, a road.

You know, you can say how many cell phones have gone up and down that road

in the last week. If there's none, there's probably a reason for it.

If there's 1000 then the road is probably open and safe and so you know.

So we're tapping into different forms of data,

as Rory said, to enable data decision making and

prioritisation

and also looking at things like

there's 10,000

energy substations and tasks within

Ukraine

and it's obviously in the news that the energy infrastructure is being targeted

by looking at by using a I and other

data driven decisions, we can see where the key nodes are that if that's gone down,

getting it back up quicker is important,

so we can prioritise the limited resources we've got

into areas.

Clearing this bridge so it can be rebuilt will allow 20,000 vehicles a day to save

two hours of driving.

Repairing this port will allow 50,000 tonnes of food to be shipped a month.

I think so. There's a lot more data behind the decision making which is factored into

this, and I think that will be really useful models or precedents to roll out

to the mine affected countries, particularly some of the ones that have sort of

run out of steam because the conflict was a long time ago. They're not in the media

and people just see it as, Oh,

we're still putting money into these areas and what we're getting from it.

So I think Ukraine will be a really significant pivot point

in this sector over the next two or three years.

Because of that,

any other follow up on from here in the room? No.

So, Jordi, you're on for a follow up on Ukraine?

Yes. Thank you.

This is a question about the access because you say that

you don't have access to the other side of the conflict.

But in fact, yes, you can't cross the front line.

But you could, for example,

come from the Russian Federation to access Donetsk Mariupol

Lugansk.

There are about 5 million of civilians living there.

So as far as I understand,

nothing is done in order to monitoring what is happening there from the UN.

But you have the possibility to go through the Russian territory. Why?

Why can't you do that? Thank you.

I'm afraid I'll put my hand up and say, That's way above my pay grade. Um

I'm working within the areas that we do have access to within the, um

the

the guidelines that are provided to me and my team.

you know the decisions behind what is happening

in DK

and the other areas and and who is gaining access to what and what are the

conditions, the criteria

on the constraints that put in place? I'm not in a position to comment on.

I view my team and my operations as completely neutral, humanitarian

and working for all the people who are affected by this conflict,

and we will happily deploy anywhere that we are able to

as long as we have the resources to do so.

Thank you, Paul, And sorry for our musical chairs here,

but we wanted to bring as many experts to you as we possibly could.

So we, uh, exaggerated the number of people we brought to the press conference.

And with that said, I'm going to now go over to Lisa. Lisa, you're on.

Oh, thank you.

And good morning.

Uh, I'd like to begin with a very quick, practical suggestion, if I may.

Would you kindly

send us the fact sheets and the names of all of the,

uh,

wonderful experts that you have brought with you the names and the titles by email,

please.

Because email doesn't disappear

as quickly as the chat box does. Thank you.

And now, for my questions,

uh, I'd like to shift continents and go to Africa,

and, uh, it's my understanding.

And, uh, anyway, I'd like you to elaborate upon this,

that, uh uh, the Sahel is one of the most heavily, uh, mined

areas in, uh,

on the continent

and, uh, speci

and and also specifically what kind of, uh, operations you have in the Sudan.

I'm thinking that right now,

Sudan is one of the greatest humanitarian crises in the world, largely neglected,

unfortunately.

And, uh, I'm wondering whether you have been in U uh, U, uh, Sudan in the past.

Whether you are there now and able to actually,

uh, implement any kind of mine clearance actions

both there and in other countries.

Uh, while there is a live conflict going on, or whether that is too serious.

And then a quick question to Francesca about Ethiopia.

You mentioned that you were trying to get, uh, visa clearances for five people

and that, uh, one has been approved and or have not.

Is there some kind of a bureaucratic hang up there? If you could elaborate upon that

and also whether you think, uh, yeah, II,

I think you said that mine clearance is actually going on.

Is it in the Tigray region in northern

af? Uh, Ethiopia. Thank you very much.

Um, just to introduce now we have Fran O'Grady who's come up.

He'll take the question about Sudan and more about the Sahel.

And then we'll come to the Ethiopia with Francesca Fran over to you.

Um, very good morning. And thanks for the question.

As Lee said, My name is Fran O'Grady. I'm with the unmasked Standing capacity,

which is designed to respond and support with strategic advice and planning.

My background has been very much in South Sudan over the last number of years.

I've been dealing in Mali in recent months,

and we will be going back immediately after this as well.

One of the areas that we've been looking at

with the standing capacity of late is Sudan.

Um and that is obviously with the conflict, a very difficult place to get access to.

Um en mas has a presence for many years

in Sudan. But the recent conflict has put a whole new layer of contamination

across the country,

and we're all seeing that play out on our screens every day, and and very often,

actually it it's falling off the radar with the other conflicts.

As you'll know, the United Nations mission

in Sudan has now sort of pulled back. And we're looking at

establishing a stand alone mine action programme

there in Sudan to work with our humanitarian

and development partners to be able to support

the interventions that are there as mine action. Very much as an enabler at

the moment are there does en mass have mine action activities ongoing

in Sudan? Not at the moment.

But we're working with the National Mine Action Authority to try and expand that.

Now there is limited risk education. Going on

access is an issue, as I've said,

but efforts are actively going on to try and expand there,

and we're watching it very closely.

That's on Sudan.

Thank you very much. Anybody have anything else more to add for Sudan? No.

OK, Francesca.

Thank

Thank you, Lisa, for the questions just to clarify.

Um

what I what I said before So we are working to get the uM

organisation. A creditor is not not really about visa

or access of, uh of international to the country, but it's at

the moment. Um

there are a number of

NGOs that are active in Ethiopia on risk education and victim assistance,

but they are not accredited and this is a bit of a technical process,

so they don't have.

Let's say they don't have authorization by the

government to conduct survey and clearance activity,

and this is what we are working on from the

side.

So we have six N

that have officially requested the government of Ethiopia to

be allowed to do a survey and clearance activities.

We are very close to have four of these organisations

officially recognised and allowed to do so by the government.

Ethiopia has a mine action office that

currently sits under the Ministry of Defence.

Their

capacity in terms of human resource,

mostly financial resources and also understanding

of the whole international mine action

work cycle is quite limited

and the reason for that is also the part of the workforce of the

Ethiopian Mine Action

Office was from

Tigre

and

with the conflict this has changed

the dynamics internal in the

ministry.

But

to answer the second part of the question. So for at the moment,

some limited clearance activity have been conducted

by the Ethiopian National Defence Forces.

So there is no humanitarian clearance

that happen in the country

because of

not

having authorization for organisations to do so.

However, we really hope

that maybe one of the next press briefing we can say that we did get this

authorization.

And I think we will share the fact sheet and also happy to answer questions via email

as a follow up.

Thank you so much, Francesca.

And just to say, Lisa,

I just resent you the mail I sent yesterday and I did get the full title and name of, uh,

Rory.

So it's out there for everyone.

Um, we did send a fact sheet out yesterday. A donor fact sheet on Gaza,

if you which I just resent to you, Lisa.

And then we have a little follow up on the Sahel answer from, uh, Mr Paul Heslop.

So I'm gonna allow him to come sit down here for a second.

Uh, so excuse us for a little more musical chairs.

I

definitely a different way to do a press conference,

wearing my different hats. Um,

I've been involved in projects in the Sahel

since we started nearly 10 years ago.

The environment there is obviously extremely complex. And

although there are traditional minefields from some of the colonialist eras,

most of the problem in the Sahel

is actually

IEDs. Improvised explosive devices that are used as

a homemade

similar to what we've seen in Iraq, Afghanistan,

Syria, Somalia, So extremely

dangerous.

Lots of different designs and variations and used very

much in the sort of asymmetric environment where they're disrupting

envoys, government patrols.

In the case of whether a UN peacekeeper deployed peacekeeping operations,

it requires quite a lot of technical skill

and knowledge to be able to deal with these devices.

And obviously they are very low cost and fairly easy to make. So

I

think that is the scourge of the Sahel.

Is the

use of IEDs in fairly

pressure plate IEDs in a fairly indiscriminate way

we can exercise this way.

We're staying. Yeah, we stay exercised up here. So does he have any follow up Lisa?

Or was that good?

Uh, yeah, it was good, but I've had a follow up.

I I asked whether and and this this is kind of across the board in a sense,

in that whether,

uh, mine action activities are going on now in the midst of, uh,

an ongoing conflict. I mean this

specifically in in the Sahel,

where there are are a number of countries that are involved with, uh

you know, armed attacks and also whether

it's possible to do this in other conflicts around

the world or whether you essentially have to wait until

peace or almost peace has been, um,

enacted in these countries. Thank you.

Thank you for that follow up.

So I can just tell you that the United

Nations Mine Action Service has presently at this moment,

uh, we do have a programme working in Burkina Faso.

Um, we've been in ***, although we're not there now. We're in Nigeria,

and we're still, Although the peacekeeping operation has moved on,

we're still there's a,

uh, a group of unmasked still in Mali, and that's what Fran had said before.

And I'm going to pass over to him right now to explain more about that

so I can just say in another context.

Whether it's in the Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or Somalia.

Mine action does continue during conflict,

and obviously it's a lot more difficult.

Um, and, um, and it's kind of every day you get up and do your job, and then

there's new job to do the next day. So it is. It is, uh, complicated.

But we do work in many conflict settings.

Um, and with that said, Let me pass over to Fran Fran over to you.

Yeah, Thanks, Lee. And good question, Lisa,

I think one of the main challenges is even though we're

in some of these countries in the Sahal going across,

it's It's the issue of access, right?

It's the issue of getting the government to give that access in.

So we're engaging very, very hard on that.

Yes, we want to do more activities on the ground,

and we talk about this on mass engagement.

We're talking that we're engaging on behalf of the sector as a whole,

the international national NGOs and the other

entities that link into mine action as well

in the Mali context.

Specifically, I'm just back from there after engaging with the government,

and we're hopeful that as the mission is drawn down now that in

the near future we may get that request to establish a new programme

where then we can look at those activities in a more practical sense

and also support the broader humanitarian mine action sector response as a whole.

So events like this advocacy is very important.

So when we deal with our heads of Cooper operation,

our donors are member states as well.

That's something that we're pushing as well

to get those voices to those governments

to open up this access for humanitarian

response and that we can also support our development partners.

But a lot of work to do still.

Thank you, Fran.

Uh, Lisa, are we good?

Excellent. Thank you. We're good. And thank you very much.

Thank you. We're gonna go over to Musa Musa

Asi,

And if you could just tell us where you're who you're working for. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. I'm Ma Musa

from

Almain

TV.

Um I'm sorry. I'm just arriving now to, uh, the press council.

As I don't know, if you spoke about Gaza,

my question concerning the

the situation there especially, uh I heard a few days ago. That is,

it takes 14 years to clear. Gaza of un unexploded abounds and mines.

I don't know if, uh, the number of years is true.

Uh, can you explain me? Uh, give me some details about the situation there, please.

Thank you.

So

that particular statistic is being quoted out of context. So

that statistic of 14 years was to clear rubble in Gaza,

where there's 37 million tonnes using 100 trucks.

So

that statistic is 14 years to clear rubble in

Gaza with 100 trucks not clearer of unexploded ordnance

in terms of the contamination, we suspect,

but we haven't been able to do an assessment, so we are not sure at this point.

The contamination will be extremely extensive.

And certainly we will require,

as a sector hundreds of millions of dollars

and multiple years to clear Gaza decades,

Possibly.

But at this time, we can't say for sure.

Thank you.

Thank you. Mungo. Uh, a follow up question, Musa.

No, thank you. It's OK.

Thank you. Thank you. Very, very much.

Very good. Well,

presently, there's no hands up in the zoom world. Anybody else wanna jump in?

This is your shot we've brought the best experts. We can get on hand today.

So if you got anything you wanna ask, please do so now and in the room.

And any other questions?

No. But

with that said,

I wanna thank everybody for coming today

and, uh, taking the time to be with us. And please do reach out.

And I will be sending everything out again.

Um, and if you have any follow up, do not hesitate to contact us.

We, uh we need obviously people to know what's going on.

And so we would love to be able to speak with you all as often as possible. Thank you.

UNMAS - Press Conference: Update on Mine Action - 01 May 2024